Samsung’s “Tizen” operating system to be delayed — again

It could be a while before consumers finally see a functioning version of Samsung’s much-talked-about Android OS alternative, Tizen. Citing various sources from the Korean media, Sammobile reports that the Korean company has delayed its first Tizen-run smartphone yet again, this time from late 2013 to an unspecified period in 2014. This marks the second time the platform has been delayed. Previously, speculations had suggested that a Tizen-based smartphone would be officially announced in early to mid 2013, following the preview of the Tizen OS at the Mobile World Congress in February.

The alleged decision to halt Tizen’s release, while unspecified, is currently believed to be related to the unfinished nature of the operating system. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to many people at this stage: As early as during the aforementioned MWC event, various observers had already been critical of Tizen’s unpolished state, with CNET’s Rick Tenholm going as far as to call it a “laggy, malformed software with no unified design aesthetic” and David Pierce of The Verge pointing to its tendency to stutter even when performing the most basic software operations.

A number of the comments being made towards a recent 9 minute video clip detailing the features of Tizen 2.2.0 also do not appear to very encouraging. WSJ, for one, saw some promise in the video shown, but stated that the platform does not appear to be offering a lot of what Android doesn’t already have.